Odermatt's giant slalom streak ends as Meillard wins in Saalbach
Mar 16, 2024·Alpine Skiing
With a perfect giant slalom season within his grasp, Marco Odermatt (SUI) finally showed that he is human after all.
Odermatt lost his balance and skied out while leading in the second run at the World Cup finals in Saalbach on Saturday, snapping his giant slalom winning streak at 12 and allowing teammate Loic Meillard (SUI) to claim the victory.
Meillard continued his superb late-season form to hand Odermatt his first giant slalom defeat since February 2023 and finish well ahead of runner-up Joan Verdu (AND, +0.71s), with Thomas Tumler (SUI, +0.79s) in third.
"I know I did a few mistakes but I tried my best and today that was enough," said Meillard, who was second to Odermatt after the first run and put enough pressure on his teammate to force him into an error in the afternoon session.
Meillard soars all the way to the top of the podium
The victory was the culmination of Meillard's stunning rise to the top as the season has gone on after a slow start to the campaign, which included a 16th place and a DNF among the first four giant slalom races.
But the 27-year-old emerged as the biggest challenger to Odermatt's dominance in the back half of the season, with three consecutive podiums delivering him second place in the discipline standings.
"I had some low points, let's put it that way," Meillard said. "We kept believing in the work we were putting in every day in training and it paid off at the end of the season.
"In January if someone would have told me I would have been second in the standings, I would have laughed and said, 'No, there's no chance.'"
Meillard also moved into second place in the overall standings ahead of Manu Feller (AUT), boosted by two wins and two runner-up places in his last four races in all disciplines.
Odermatt's perfect season comes to an end
Bidding to make it 10-from-10 in giant slalom this season and starting the second run with an advantage over Meillard of 0.40 seconds, Odermatt lost his balance on the inside ski in the top section of the second run and while he managed to stay on his skis, he couldn't make the next gate.
"In conditions like this, you get faster on your inside ski boots and that happened, and then you slide away very quick and that was the mistake today," he said.
Riding a 12-race giant slalom winning streak and a 26-race giant slalom podium streak going back almost three years to the day, Odermatt insisted that the pressure of continuing those streaks and approaching some of Ingemar Stenmark's (SWE) single-discipline records did not undo him.
"I think it wasn't the pressure, I felt very relaxed in the second run," he said.
"A little bit disappointed about the result, about this perfect season which isn't perfect now. But that's ski racing, that's sport, and that's part of it."
Odermatt still claimed the giant slalom crystal globe by 432 points and remains on track to win four globes and to break his own men's points record from a season ago if he can score more than 140 points in his final two races.
Dream podiums for Verdu and Tumler after back injuries
Verdu, who recorded Andorra's first World Cup podium last December in Val d'Isere, has had his campaign derailed by injury but returned on Saturday to set a career-best result after moving up three spots from the first run.
"Results like this, they are unique, so it's really special," said the 28-year-old, who had missed the previous three giant slalom races with a back injury.
"I feel the pressure but I also feel all the support. I'm racing for me, for my country, and to be able to achieve a result like this after a really hard month for me, it's something crazy.
"I try to dream big and like this we can achieve big, big dreams."
Finishing in the top three was also a dream for Tumler, who moved up five spots after the first run but only had his podium confirmed when Odermatt skied out.
Tumler reached his third career World Cup podium and his first in a traditional discipline in over five years, since he came third in a giant slalom in Beaver Creek in December 2018.
"It's my third podium but for sure the best one," said Tumler, who also reached the podium in a parallel event in 2020 but who has had a long road back after suffering a serious back injury later that year.
"I lost my the trust in my body," the 34-year-old admitted. "The body was good but the head was the problem, and I needed two more years to get back to this comfort mode with my body.
"But step by step, it was possible to come back to this nice moment."
